Ultra-endurance events are seeing a considerable spike in popularity as athletes look to redefine the traditional tests of strength and stamina.
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Athletes have long been using altitude tents and chambers to gain a training edge over their competitors. While the most convenient way to “altitude train” at sea level is to simply sleep at altitude, the growing consensus among scientists and experts is that this may not be enough and that the longer you can spend at elevation each day, the better.
“The idea that you could just sleep at altitude was an original theory,” says Dr. Chapman, an altitude specialist who coaches distance runners on Team Indiana Elite. “It turns out that a minimum of 12 to 16 hours is needed to really have an effect,” he adds.
Dr. Chapman published a review on altitude training in Sports Medicine this year, which says that, based on the available evidence, athletes should spend at least 12 to 16 hours per day at 6,500 to 8,000 feet for at least four weeks to maximize their performance gains.
The performance gain that Dr. Chapman refers to is the time improvement that most athletes see from a “live high-train low” altitude camp — a training regimen where athletes live at altitude and do all of their intensity workouts as near to sea level as possible. Research has shown that this is the best way to train at elevation, and Dr. Chapman predicts that such a camp can help marathoners improve their times by five percent.
Unfortunately, there are few spots in the United States that are conducive to this — Mammoth, California, and Flagstaff, Arizona, are among them — which is why many elite athletes choose to simulate the altitude regimen with tents and chambers.
Chapman’s recommendations were echoed in another review written by Drs. Randall Wilber, James Stray-Gundersen and Benjamin Levine that was published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise this year. Drs. Levine and Stray-Gundersen were the scientists who originally developed the “hi-lo” theory.
“It seems quite clear that if you only spend about eight to 10 hours per night, at 10,000 feet, you just don’t get any change in red cells, and no change in aerobic-type performance,” says Dr. Levine.
This is not to say that sleeping at altitude provides athletes with no physiological or performance benefits whatsoever. There are several published studies that suggest that sleeping at altitude helps endurance athletes shave off precious seconds from their times, such as a recent study that was published in the European Journal of Sport Science. However, when athletes add more hours to their days, more studies begin to pop up that report significant performance gains.
“The more hours you can spend at altitude, the better. Eight hours appears to work, and as you go on spending more hours, then there is more research [that shows it works],” says Shaun Wallace, a former Olympic cyclist for the United Kingdom who built the first altitude tent and who is currently employed at Colorado Altitude Training, a company that manufactures altitude tents that range from cramped to room-like in size.
“The tent does give a positive response for most people. It is just that with normal use (about eight to 10 hours per day), the gain in red blood cell mass is about half of what we normally see by full-time residence at altitude. In this case, even some response is better than no response,” says Dr. Chapman.
Colorado Altitude Training’s CEO and Founder Larry Kutt says that, after years of working with thousands of athletes ranging from Lance Armstrong to players on the Philadelphia Flyers, as well as with some of the best scientists in the world, the “right prescription” seems to be a minimum of eight hours per day at 9,000 to 11,000 feet for three weeks.
“Since people are sleeping in our systems by and large, they should be exposed to the altitude for eight hours. If you hang on a little longer, or watch a little TV, that is probably going to be beneficial as well,” says Kutt. One of the primary reasons that the Levine/Stray-Gundersen lab recommends 12 to 16 hour episodes at altitude involves the human body’s red blood cell-making machinery, as they believe that an increase in red blood cells is the fundamental cause behind the benefits of altitude training. According to Dr. Chapman, when an athlete gets to altitude, his body immediately begins to produce EPO, which is used in step #8 of the approximately 18-step red blood cell-production process. But if the athlete returns to sea level, the EPO disappears; and if the red blood cell “machine” hasn’t reached step #8 yet, many of the building blocks are lost. If you are a serious, competitive athlete who is looking to step up to the next level but who cannot move to altitude, you will probably experience some training benefit if you sleep in a tent. However, if you want to maximize your results, the evidence suggests that you will have to spend at least 12 hours per day for four weeks at 6,500 to 11,000 feet. (Hint: Don’t get carried away with Everest heights. If you go any higher than 11,000 feet, your recovery will begin to deteriorate, and you’ll probably suffer from sleep apnea.)
This longer dose requirement means that if you want to go gung-ho, your best bet is to convert a room in your house into a hypoxic environment. Companies such as Colorado Altitude Training or Hypoxico can do this (for a hefty price.) In fact, some experts point to the recent success of Alberto Salazar’s Oregon Project to the altitude house that many of its runners use, which was built by Colorado Altitude Training.
But before you spring for a tent or room conversion, you should know that there is a caveat with altitude training: There is a huge amount of individual variability. Some athletes, unfortunately, will never benefit from altitude training, and scientists have yet to figure out why they don’t respond.
In the final analysis, altitude training is like any other training technique: Results vary, but it works and it is clear that most will benefit from it. Finding the optimum time to spend at altitude, however, is somewhat individual. So whether you want to invest in a tent and sleep in it, create an altitude room and spend 12 hours a day in it, or move to Mammoth and train with Meb Keflezighi, you will likely improve with whatever route you take. Need another 10 seconds a mile? This just might put you over the edge.
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